You chide me, my dear,* for my freedoms with relations still nearer and
dearer to you, than either uncles or brother or sister. You had better
have permitted me (uncorrected) to have taken my own way. Do not use
those freedoms naturally arise from the subject before us? And from whom
arises that subject, I pray you? Can you for one quarter of an hour put
yourself in my place, or in the place of those who are still more
indifferent to the case than I can be?--If you can--But although I have
you not often at advantage, I will not push you.


* See Vol. I. Letter XXVIII.


Permit me, however, to subjoin, that well may your father love your
mother, as you say he does. A wife who has no will but his! But were
there not, think you, some struggles between them at first, gout out of
the question?--Your mother, when a maiden, had, as I have heard (and it
is very likely) a good share of those lively spirits which she liked in
your father. She has none of them now. How came they to be dissipated?
--Ah! my dear!--she has been too long resident in Trophonius's cave, I
doubt.*


* Spectator, Vol. VIII. No. 599.


Let me add one reflection upon this subject, and so entitle myself to
your correction for all at once.--It is upon the conduct of those wives
(for you and I know more than one such) who can suffer themselves to be